Hollywood action films follow a very definite formula. This can be applied to almost all films starring Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme and many more...

Prologue

There are two variants:

(a) The bad guy hatches his evil plan, and his lieutenant kills an associate/brother of the good guy.

(b) The good guy has a Horrible Experience leaving himself with The Weakness That Must be Overcome to Win e.g. heights, snakes, spiders, alien killing machines.

Opening Titles

Usually involves fire and/or guns.

Meeting the hero

This is where we, surprise surprise, meet the hero. Maybe he's clearing up his previous case. Perhaps he's showing what a loose cannon he is by ignoring his boss. He could be at his associate/brother's funeral. In any case, the sum total of the character development of the main character happens here.

Starting the case

Our indomitable hero is given an apparently irrelevant job to the main case by his boss, who doesn't like him. He will be with his older, wiser, ethnic partner/sidekick. They will argue and the hero will be told it is his last chance. The one lead in this irrelevant case is a scared man with a rodent nickname. e.g. Robby the Rat, Sammy the Shrew, or Colin the Coypu.

Meeting the contact

The hero will go and meet the contact, who will be killed by the bad guy's lieutenant before he can say anything. The hero will shoot at the lieutenant, who will be a sadist, and will have an interesting disability (e.g. fake eye, mechanical arm, metal exoskeleton) or accent. (e.g. English, South African, Jamaican). He is only referred to by his first name e.g. Boris/Milo/Karl/Pieter. The lieutenant will get away. Our hero will gnash his teeth.

Meeting the bad guy

The hero will work out who the lieutenant is and will trace him to the bad guy, who will be an outwardly respectable industrialist, businessman, politician or evil genius. His name would score well in Scrabble by having an X, Q or Z in it. The hero will burst into the bad guy's office. The hero will spar verbally with the bad guy. The lieutenant will be in the office. He will growl at the hero. The hero will threaten the bad guy, and slam the door on his way out.

Meeting the girl

The Love Interest will come and talk to the hero. She will be a relative of the stunted, swarthy, ratlike contact, and will, in total contravention of the laws of genetics, be a tall, blonde babe. She will then shag the hero 10 minutes after having met him. They will be sleeping at the apartment of the hero when the lieutenant and his henchmen will burst through the door and shoot everything except, miraculously, the hero and his Love Interest, who has got dressed in 2 seconds, in expensive but impractical clothes for a gunfight(e.g. stilettoes, Versace dress), who escape.

Hero fights his private crusade

Our guy is angry now. He is told that he has no evidence by his increasingly angry boss/captain and he throws his badge/PI licence or what have you at the boss. He slams the door on the way out. He finds out that the bad guy has kidnapped the girl. Him and his partner now do their private crusade thing, but not before tooling up with more impressive weapons.

The bad guy's hideout

They go to the bad guy's hideout, which is built around the secret fear of the hero (e.g. very tall, full of snakes), and rescue the girl, passing the tall sharp object on the way up. But someone raises the alarm and the lieutenant shoots the hero's ethnic partner. The bad guy starts his final plan into action.

The good guy fights the lieutenant

The good guy now has a big fight with the lieutenant. The girl tried to help by hitting him over the head with a plank of wood, but the lieutenant hits her and she crumples. It looks like the bad guy is about to win, but the good guy just manages to get the heavy object / switch that drops a big box / length of rusty chain to incapacitate him, and wins.

The denoument

The good guy now has to stop the demonic plan. To do this he must overcome his fear, practically this means he does what needs to be done, but just closes his eyes and grits his teeth whilst he does it. The bad guy (Dr./Senator/Professor/Mr. Quyxzx) then loses all control and wants to press the big button which blows everyone up. The hero then stops him and throws him onto the big sharp object from the previous chapter. The partner turns up, and he snogs the girl. The good guy then says something facile about the bad guy "getting the point" or how he should have "minded the first step". Then they go home and the Eric Clapton music starts over the credits.

The End